This about sums up how I feel about leaving for BlogHer tomorrow–or really, the whole summer:
Like maybe I bit off more than I can chew.
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summer
I tease that Mayberry is a small town, and it is, especially if you’ve come here from New York City and you are used to being able to go to Whole Foods or a really good Indian restaurant any old time you want. But it’s still basically a suburban environment. We have sidewalks and fences and two grocery stores. We do have some neighbors who keep chickens, but after their rooster caused a flap (har har), the city passed an ordinance prohibiting roosters (although hens are still allowed).
Another neighbor has a large garden, and we’ve dabbled in pumpkins and a raspberry bush. Mostly, we buy our food at the store. But this year, we’ve tried harder to buy local. Our freezer holds 1/8 of a side of beef from a farm about 15 miles away. And we finally joined a CSA. The smart folks at what we like to call “our” farm arranged to deliver produce shares to Jeff’s workplace, and we signed up immediately.
This weekend, our farmers held an open house, so we packed up the kids and drove to the farm. Photo is filched from their website, because I was too busy enjoying the visit to take any pictures (also I might have forgotten the camera). We got to meet the friendly, welcoming couple who run the farm, their three kids, their two dogs, their cat, and a bunch of their chicks and chickens. We saw their beehives and their greenhouse and the garage converted into a packing area for their boxes, complete with long wooden slide for empty boxes traveling to the assembly line. We saw their pond and their tire swing and some of the 20 acres of fields. In these fields, they grow dozens of crops for themselves and their members, and they do everything by hand with no pesticides or synthetic fertilizer. (They have some paid and work-share staff.)
We squished in the mud (there was a lot of mud) and tasted tomatoes and green beans right off the vine. It was idyllic while at the same time an important reminder of how much work goes into an enterprise like this.
We think it made an impression on the kids. When we got home, Opie created a new Mii avatar and named it after the farmers’ son. I guess that’s what happens when you take a small-town boy out of the town and into the country.
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As you might expect, we do it up big on the 4th of July in Mayberry. An evening parade on the 3rd featured, among other entrants, our town’s brand-new chief of police wearing a flak jacket and cruising down the street on a Segway, handing out candy, while his 5 children and wife followed him … each one riding a unicycle.
And a guy on a boat angling for a large fish.
On the Fourth, we follow with the kids’ bike parade, in which Opie was not feeling the USA loooove.
He cheered up after cheating death on the carny swings.
A dose of cotton candy may also have played a role.
We followed all this excitement with a barbecue at Nick’s including a lot of pyrotechnics in the street in front of Nick’s house (of course “Nick’s dad buyed $250 worth of fireworks and blowed them up”). Then back to our tarp, placed in the park the night before, for Mayberry’s own fireworks show. Of which no photos, because I was too busy doling out snacks and blankets and glow sticks to even bring my camera.
All in all, a happy Fourth and I hope yours was too.
P.S. I spared you the pictures from the clown show. You’re welcome.
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Vacation day 1: driving … driving … projectile vomit alert!! … driving … driving … driving … gross rest stop food amazingly not followed by more projectile vomit … driving … driving
Day 2: swimming … swimming … swimming … swimming … Scrabble
Day 3: house has pool, 5.5 bathrooms, 2 laundry rooms … NO wi-fi. Twitching … twitching … coffee shop
So that’s about as much of a post as I can muster for now. Having a lovely time except for lack of Internet. Talk to you later!
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at community theater production of High School Musical*:
“I love Footloose! It’s, like, my favorite older movie.”
*One of several bribes rewards offered to a certain little patient in return for choking down 6 daily doses of nasty antibiotics.
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And no I’m not referring to these upper midwestern climes we now enjoy. Actually, summers here are beautiful, with sunshine and temperatures in the 80s for much of July and August. After winters that go on, and on, and on and on, we enjoy and appreciate our summers and spend as much time outside as we can. Mayberry has a totally kid-pleasing community pool, with a huge shallow end, two water slides, a sandbox, a lawn, and the all-important concession stand. We’re also not above ruining our new grass with a blow-up kiddie pool of our own and even one of these monstrosities (purchased on end-of-season clearance thx). Yep — we are big consumers of the Little Swimmers ’round these parts.
We have fun. But it’s nothing compared to the adventures my husband had when he was a kid. His aunt and uncle had a lake house (a 20-minute drive from their … non-lake house) and he and his brother and cousins would spend every day of every summer there, just generally goofing off and having a good time.
My favorite lake story is this, and it’s totally of the moment because we are currently obsessed with all things Star Wars in this house. (Tip, BTW: Pool noodles make excellent, cheap light sabers.)
Anyway (get to the point young Jedi) one day Jeff and his brother and his brother’s friend Marc found this big piece of styrofoam. They immediately decided that it would make an excellent iceberg and it should go on the lake. The next time they came to the lake they brought every single Star Wars figure they owned — i.e., hundreds — plus a bunch of spacecraft and airplanes. Then they spent an hour painstakingly setting up a huge battle scene on the styrofoam iceberg.
Their masterpiece complete, they floated it onto the water.
You know what happens next, right?
It floated too far out, and Jeff’s mom wouldn’t let them go after it. They threw rocks at it, trying to shift the current to send it back toward their dock. Instead, they ended up breaking it and sending all their guys to an even swifter watery death. Some clung to the edge for awhile, but with no rescue crew in sight eventually they succumbed to the inevitable drowning.
For the rest of that summer and all the next, Jeff and Mike and Marc hoped against hope that Luke or Han or Lando would wash up on shore and be returned to them. It never happened, but the story lives on.
Tell your summer story for this weekend’s blog blast. May the Force be with you.
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